september1999 october 1999 presenting your research: papers, talks, and chats marie desjardins...

September1999October 1999October 1999

Presenting Your Research:Papers, Talks, and Chats

Marie desJardins ([email protected])

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

First Annual MAPLE Research Colloquium

31 May 2002

(Very minor modifications by J. N. Amaral in Sept. 2005)


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Research isn’t just research

Who cares about what you do, if you never tell them? You’ll need to present your ideas in various forms

and venues: Networking with colleagues at UofA and elsewhere Writing and submitting papers to workshops, conferences,

and journals Presenting papers at workshops and conferences Putting together a website that highlights your interests and

research activities …oh, and these things also provide useful experience

for job interviews, not to mention valuable job skills…


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Networking

Meet people! It helps to have an objective: Find out what research they’re currently working on Tell them what you’re currently working on Find an area of common interest Learn what their visions/future directions are Suggest a new direction for research or topic for a class

What’s in this interaction for you? What’s in it for them? If you know two friends, and they know two friends,

and they know two friends… Pretty soon you know everybody!


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Networking II

You need to be prepared to summarize your research For a thesis topic, you should have a 1-minute, 5-minute,

and 15-minute presentation already thought through The same goes for other projects you’ve been working on Be able to distinguish between your original contributions,

your advisor’s contributions, and ideas drawn from previous research

Practice with other students!


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Writing and submitting papers

For a master’s thesis, you should aim to have at least one “good” conference paper by the time you graduate

For a doctoral dissertation, you should aim for a couple of good conference papers and a journal paper

Writing these papers is great practice for the thesis itself… (and you can reuse the material!)

Where to submit? Look at publication lists of people doing research related to

yours, and see where they publish Publish at the conferences that have the most interesting

papers


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Writing papers: Strategy

First, decide where you plan to submit the paper You may not finish in time, but having a deadline is always

helpful Two to four months away is a good planning horizon

Next, decide what you will say What are the key ideas? Have you developed them yet? What are the key results? Have you designed and run the

experiments yet? Have you analyzed the data? What is the key related work? Have you read the relevant

background material? Can you give a good summary of it?

Now get started on the work you need to do to fill in the missing holes! (You can write in parallel…)


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Writing papers: Design

Abstract –summarizes the research contributions, not the paper (i.e., it shouldn’t be an outline of the paper)

Introduction/motivation – what you’ve donewhat you’ve done and why the why the reader should carereader should care, plus an outline of the paper

Technical sections – one or more sections summarizing the research ideas you’ve developed

Experiments/results/analysis – one or more sections presenting experimental results and/or supporting proofs

Future work – summary of where you’re headed next and open questions still to be answered

Conclusions – reminder of what you’ve said and why it’s important

Related work – sometimes comes after introduction, sometimes before conclusions (depends to some extent on whether you’re building on previous research, or dismissing it as irrelevant)


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Writing papers: Tactics

Top-down design (outline) is very helpful Bulleted lists can help you get past writer’s block

Unless you’re a really talented/experienced writer, you should use these tools before you start writing prose

Neatness counts! Check spelling, grammar, consistency of fonts and notation before showing it to anyone for review If they’re concentrating on your typos, they might miss

what’s interesting about the content Leave time for reviews!

Fellow students, collaborators, advisors, … A paper is only done when it’s submitted... and usually not

even then.


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Authorship

Who should be an author? Anyone who contributed significantly to the conceptual

development or writing of the paper Not necessarily people who provided feedback,

implemented code, or ran experiments

What order should the authors be listed in? If some authors contributed more of the conceptual

development and/or did most/all of the writing, they should be listed first

If the contribution was equal or the authors worked as a team, the authors should be listed in alphabetical order

Sometimes the note “The authors are listed in alphabetical order” is explicitly included


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Giving talks

Know how long you have How long is the talk? Are questions included? A good heuristic is 2-3 minutes per slide If you have too many slides, you’ll skip some or—worse—

rush desperately to finish. Avoid this temptation!! You never have time to say everything about a topic, so

don’t worry about skipping some things! Unless you’re very experienced giving talks, you should

practice your timing: A couple of times on your own to get the general flow At least one dry run to work out the kinks A run-through on your own the night before the talk


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Giving talks II

Know who your audience is Don’t waste time on basics if you’re talking to an audience in

your field Even for these people, you need to be sure you’re

explaining each new concept clearly On the other hand, you’ll lose people in a general audience if

you don’t give the necessary background In any case, the most important thing is to emphasize what

you’ve done and why they should care!


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Giving talks III

Know what you want to say Just giving a project summary is not interesting to most

people You should give enough detail to get your interesting ideas

across (and to show that you’ve actually solved the problem), but not so much that you lose your audience

They want to hear what you did that was cool and why they should care

Preferably, they’ll hear the above two points at the beginning of the talk, over the course of the talk, and at the end of the talk

If they’re intrigued, they’ll ask questions or read your paper Whatever you do, don’t just read your slides!


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Preparing slides

Don’t just read your slides! Use the minimum amount of text necessary Use examples Use a readable, simple, yet elegant format Use color to emphasize important points, but avoid the

excessive use of color Don’t fidget, and…

Don’t just read your slides!

Abuse of animation is a cardinal sin!


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How to give a bad talkAdvice from Dave Patterson, summarized by Mark Hill

1. Thou shalt not be neat

2. Thou shalt not waste space

3. Thou shalt not covet brevity

4. Thou shalt cover thy naked slides

5. Thou shalt not write large

6. Thou shalt not use color

7. Thou shalt not illustrate

8. Thou shalt not make eye contact

9. Thou shalt not skip slides in a long talk

10. Thou shalt not practice


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Some useful resources

Writing: Lynn DuPre, Bugs in Writing Strunk & White, Elements of Style

Giving talks: Mark Hill, “Oral presentation advice” Patrick Winston, “Some lecturing heuristics” Simon L. Peyton Jones et al., “How to give a good research

talk” Dave Patterson, “How to have a bad career in

research/academia”

september1999 october 1999 presenting your research: papers, talks, and chats marie desjardins...

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